It had been over a fortnight since Faye’s victorious duel with Iain. The days were blurring together for Faye, and it was hard to tell them apart.

One after another, the same things happened day after day.

She did not get chance to level and was not able to spend time with Taveon — he did manage to get a message to her that said he was taken up by his teaching duties, along with profuse apologies. That didn't stop her frustration from building, but she tried to channel it elsewhere.

She had the primer on Cróian he had given to her. She’d made some progress, but with the translation effect, it was difficult to maintain the practise. There was probably a better, easier way of learning the language for someone like her. But whatever that was, she didn’t know it.

It didn’t help that no one else around her had the same issue, so her friends had no idea how to help either.

Arran, Ailith, and Gavan were all taking on work around the town. It seemed that they were well liked and connected. A couple of times she asked to go with them and they had agreed — but it wasn’t as if Faye was able to help with the work.

Ailith was lifting things many times her own body weight regularly, Gavan was using his magic to safely manipulate hot metal into precise designs. Arran was the one that seemed to be doing more ordinary work, but a lot of it consisted of meeting with various people in the town. People Faye had no connection with.

She felt like a mascot more than a worker.

She had quickly stopped asking to accompany them.

Instead, she found herself mostly wandering through the town. There were an abundant number of buildings that were seemingly empty. She wasn’t sure why. They didn’t have the abandoned look that she’d expect from the vacant premises, no boarded-up windows or rubbish-strewn streets. The fairly well-kept areas were just oddly quiet.

It just added to her questions and confusion about the town and the people in it.

Exploring every street and alleyway did not lead to anything interesting, though there were times where she found herself in groups of young men and women that would silently watch her until she left. It seemed that even those she’d never spoken to knew something of her, as she’d catch the occasional whisper of her name.

That day, her feet took her to the market square. Snow had fallen again, and she crunched through the streets with each step. Her breath fogged in front of her face, and she kept up a brisk pace to ward off the chill air.

The stall owners had each cleared an area around the stall, and steel braziers were lit and roaring with open flames — tended by a few people in charred aprons — that kept small pools of snow-free space that were natural meeting places for the townsfolk who congregated in the market square to talk, catch up with friends, or do business.

This time, Faye found a stall that gave her a small piece of fruit, cut into a wedge like a piece of melon, though it tasted a little more like a pear. Nibbling on the treat, she wandered the aisles of stalls, stuffing the small coins that Ailith had given her back into the pouch tied to her belt.

It surprised her that she was falling into the routine of living in Lóthaven as easily as she had. She worried that she would lose all sense of being in a strange place. Then again, she came across odd things and odd people every day, so there wasn't much chance of that actually happening.

A small part of her did wonder that if she stopped thinking of this place as alien she would lose an important part of her identity.

No longer the woman from Earth, but a woman from this world…

“—already! Only three weeks and level thirteen. How long did it take you, Muir? Probably longer, eh?”

Faye’s daydreaming was interrupted by the voice of Rían, the teenager with the anger issues. She glanced around, trying to find an exit route.

If she could just slip away…

“Ah, look who it is!”

Dammit, she cursed.

“Bring me some of that cércag!”

Her brain stuttered for a moment, then she realised that she’d heard the native word for the fruit she was holding instead of the translated one.

“Now.”

She ground her teeth. She would not rise to the bait. She knew that he’d have seen her pause for a moment, giving away the fact that she’d heard him, but she didn’t care at that point.

A hand darted out and grabbed her upper arm, hard. The man roughly jerked her to a stop.

“It’s rude to ignore your betters, girl.”

She turned to glare at the man holding her — and with a shock she recognised the man who’d interrupted her impromptu lesson with Taveon a few weeks ago. What had his name been? Derron, Dursa?

“Ah, Adept Deorsa! I’m certainly glad that some of us are inclined to teach people their place in the world.”

Faye narrowed her eyes, Deorsa, that was it! If he and Rían were friendly, she wanted nothing to do with either of them.

“Eh, didn’t do it for you, little lord.” Deorsa’s words weren’t harsh with Rían, though he sounded somewhat polite.

The little lord in question nodded graciously to the man regardless. “Well enough. Now, what am I to do with you?”

Faye turned to glare up at him. The fact that the little shit was taller than her rubbed her the wrong way, but it was a difficulty that she’d had to deal with time and time again. Normally, she’d have been able to shut them up with her sword skill. She didn’t think that would work in this instance.

“Did you hear of my exploits as you were walking the streets?” Rían asked her, preening a little with the attention that those around them were paying. “I reached level thirteen this morning.”

Faye eyed him, and then glanced around. Most of the bystanders looked relatively placid at the news. She didn’t think it was a huge deal.

When she had first encountered him, those weeks ago when she had dropped into the centre of the town square unexpectedly, he had just hit level ten he had said.

Three levels in that time didn’t seem like a lot to her, but she had literally nothing to compare it to other than her own progress, which was an entire ten levels behind his. Of course, the others had said that her reaching level three in the time that she had was quick but she put that down to being an adult already and being able to physically do things that children couldn’t.

Rían twitched and Faye had the impression he was itching to hit her. She just raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not sure where you were raised… but it’s rude t’ ignore your betters. He deserves your respect,” Deorsa said. He was looming over her shoulder, his fists resting on his hips.

She turned to him and cocked her head.

“No, you’re demanding that I respect him,” she replied. Straightening her head she shrugged, glancing at Rían a little. “Of course, if I see my betters, I will give them the respect they deserve.”

She moved to walk away, but Deorsa and Rían were not the only people around her, now. The murmurs of the crowd weren’t happy, to say the least.

“I’m not sure you understand, but then with someone of yer ken, I’m not sure what I expected.”

“… an idiot.”

Gritting her teeth against the words she heard bandied about by the men that surrounded her, she turned and grabbed a slice of the cércag fruit and thrust it into Rían’s waiting hand.

He took it with a smirk and took an insignificant bite, dropping it at his feet immediately.

“That one was rotten. Get me another.”

Faye let a smile fix onto her face. She turned, took another piece and examined it, turning it this way and that, then nodded to herself and gently placed it into his hand.

“Here you are, young master, I hope you enjoy this piece of fruit. I carefully selected it for being free of blemishes.”

As she gave it to him, she leaned in and took hold of his wrist. She pulled him in as if they were best friends, a huge grin crossing her face.

“You’re going to regret this,” she whispered.

Then, she extricated herself from the crowd and left the market square. The whole way, she shook with barely concealed rage.

It wasn’t enough that she had to find herself in a strange world with magic and God only knows what other odd things, but she just had to land in a place with arrogant... whatever he was. A noble, maybe?

In her time here, she had seen a mixture of people. Most of them worked hard at a trade. Either working with their hands or with their stores.

Rían was the odd one out in that picture. She wasn’t sure what he did, other than go out adventuring.

Was it really that simple?

Either way, she walked away from him and his pettiness. She half wished she hadn’t thrown him on his arse or started anything weeks ago. It was clear he wasn’t the forgiving type.

Damn my anger. Damn. Damn. Damn.

But even as she thought it, the looming sense of shadow and weight settled in further on her shoulders and she hunched to protect herself.

He deserved it. They all deserve a punch in the face. Shame I'd just hurt myself if I did. Arran would have a fit if I went around fighting everyone that deserved it. Ailith might laugh.

She shook herself and carried on, stewing silently.

At the house, later, Faye had divested herself of the wet and cold clothes she had explored the town in and was warming herself by the fire in a plain woollen, but warm, dress. She ran a hand through her hair and grimaced.

It had been weeks since she’d washed it properly. It seemed that no one in Lóthaven had heard of conditioner, so she’d resorted to using a soap on it earlier that week. It hadn’t been a successful test and she found it was losing its healthy shine — okay, who was she trying to kid? It had lost its healthy shine a few days after she’d arrived and hadn’t gotten it back.

“What’s the matter with you?”

She turned and saw that Arran was watching her from the doorway as he removed his cloak and boots.

“I am mourning the loss of my home necessities,” she said, pushing down the bubbling cauldron of anger from earlier that threatened to rise again. “My hair is a mess.”

He nodded. “I figured there would be some things you were missing from home. I’m surprised you haven’t talked about it, much.”

She shrugged, hugging her knees a little closer on the chair. The burning faded, changing to something colder but no less painful.

“It’s hard enough without talking about it all of the time,” she said. “But I do. Miss things, I mean. People, too.”

Arran walked into the room proper, sitting on a chair that faced the hearth. He stretched out his feet and signed as they got close to the flames.

“I’m sorry that you’re here,” he said after a while. He paused. “No, I’m sorry that you’re sad. To be honest, we’ve all had some interesting weeks with you here.” He said that last with a grin that she couldn’t help but return.

“Oh yeah? Not wishing that you’d never come across me and that you still had your real job?”

Arran’s grin turned into a grimace. “Yeah, I wish I was still able to do my job. I worry that the other teams aren’t enough… but I find myself unable to regret helping you, Faye.”

She looked at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but he was staring into the fireplace, eyes consumed by the bright licks of flame that danced and crackled across the logs. His voice dropped.

“There are things in this world that we cannot hope to deal with. There’s always someone or something stronger than us but we have to keep going.”

“I can’t really imagine living my entire life like that,” Faye said, quietly.

Arran nodded. “Most people don’t. They leave it to us adventuring types. The Guild pays us to do the job that no one else wants.”

She laughed for a moment, causing him to look at her curiously.

“Sorry, no, I was thinking about what some people back home would do to live in a world of magic, swords, and monsters… there are people that think about that a lot. But I guess that it’s different fantasising about it. When it’s actually your life on the line it’s probably not as exciting, is it?”

Arran hummed. “Did you not feel the same when you were out there on your own?”

She thought about it for a moment. She didn’t remember exactly what she had done. There were flashes of running, fighting, cats, squirrels, and other creatures that had tried to attack her.

“It was mostly confusing. I was running on pure adrenaline, I think.”

Then thoughts of the mountaintop castle and the spectre that haunted it invaded her recollection. She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold outside.

Then the almost familiar physical pressure grew across her shoulders.

She hunched in and hugged her knees.

“Arran, I need to get stronger,” she murmured. “I can’t stay like this forever.”

“I know,” he said. “I heard about the marketplace.”

She blinked and looked across at him. He was looking at her now, a pitying expression crossing his face. She hesitated a moment, contemplating telling him the real reason she knew she needed to be stronger. In the end, there was little difference between the two.

Creatures and monsters that wanted to kill her versus arseholes that bossed her around.

Getting stronger would stop both of those, and there would be something so satisfying about dealing with either problem that she felt the burning need to get up and train immediately.

Of course, there was also the fact that it was snowing outside, and she was sitting in front of the incredibly cosy fireplace.

“I’m…” Arran started, but he stopped almost before he began. She looked at him, and he was avoiding her gaze now.

“You’re, what?”

He sighed. “I shouldn’t say anything.”

She just shook her head. It was a stupid rule, a stupid punishment. It seemed petty, really. But if Arran didn’t want to break his professional word for her, well… she shrugged mentally. She couldn’t make him.

“I think something’s wrong with your system,” he said, suddenly. Quietly, as if there were listeners in the walls. She looked around instinctively, for all she knew there could be. “I don’t mean because of you, or anything like that. None of the shite that people here grow up believing.”

She just nodded.

“You’ve been training for weeks,” he said. He shifted forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he spoke. He alternated looking straight at her and in the heart of the fire. “Weeks of training at that pace… with nothing to show for it.”

She frowned. “That’s not true, I’ve gotten better—”

“—No, that’s not what I mean,” he interrupted. “You should have received a skill, maybe even two. You haven’t told us if you have… though, maybe you don’t trust us to say?”

He trailed off a little, and she realised that he was genuinely asking if she didn’t trust them with her skills.

“What? No,” she said, laughing a little. “You think I don’t trust you? Arran, you and the others, you’ve given me somewhere to stay, food, clothing, even bloody pocket money! You’ve all stuck your necks out for me. I can’t believe that I found you.” Her breath caught, and she swallowed as she looked at his face. She stuttered a little. “All of you, you’ve been so kind.”

Arran kept her gaze for a moment longer, then blinked and looked down. He nodded. “We couldn’t have left you out there, not in this weather.”

Faye shifted to sit up a little more, moving her feet underneath her. “I haven’t received any notifications in weeks,” she said. “Is that not normal?”

Arran’s gaze focused again, and she convinced herself that the expression of melancholy that she’d seen hadn’t really been there.

“No, that’s what I’m getting at. It’s not normal. Your system should be telling you all kinds of information.” He frowned here. “Except… gah, it’s hard to remember what it was like exactly.” He spread his hands. “You get so used to how the system is now that it’s hard to recall how things were when you were a kid.”

She nodded. It made sense. Technology was the same. You get so used to the fact that it’s there, it’s hard to remember exactly what it was like day to day without it; in the days of youth, and Faye had grown up as the exact last generation that would even know what that was like.

“Okay, so my system’s not acting normally,” she said. “What can I do about it?”

“You remember that when we fought those sprites, you told us that the system told you their name?”

“Yeah, of course. Congratulated me for killing them, told me how much experience I earned, that kind of thing.”

He nodded. “Everyone's is different, of course. But generally, a system like yours is extremely useful because it translates things that the system knows directly. My own system isn’t as precise, for example. Unless it’s for a duel.”

“Really? How can it be so different for everyone, though? If it’s a system, isn’t it supposed to, I don’t know, make sense?” she asked.

He chuckled. “I have no idea. That’s something that scholars are researching, and probably have been since the dawn of the system.”

“How long has the world had it?”

Arran shrugged, sitting back in his chair. He looked up at the ceiling. “I’m not sure, though I’m sure someone knows. I remember my parents telling me stories as a kid. But those were children’s stories.”

“Some of those have grains of truth in them, though,” she said.

“I’d have to ask them about it,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I remember them properly. I feel like I grew up pretty fast. I was still sitting on my father’s knee when he last told me the tales.”

Faye nodded. “Okay, so about my system not working…” she said. “What can I do about it?”

Here, Arran sat forward again. He focused on her face. “I’m not sure. But there’s something that doesn’t make sense to me. You’re too good with the sword not to have a skill already.”

Faye flushed guiltily. “Ah,” she murmured. “That’s because it already gave me a skill for swordfighting.”

He blinked. She looked away.

“You already have a skill for swordfighting,” he repeated.

“Yes, it’s basic, I think,” she said. She frowned. It had been a long time since she’d received it. “It was one of the first things the system told me. Basic swordfighting, or something like that.”

“You can check your skills, you know?” he said. She could tell he was suppressing his excitement. “For most people, you have to focus on the idea of seeing your skills. Like a mental command. It might take a few moments.”

Faye tried what Arran was suggesting. It seemed so obvious that she felt that it would have already popped up with the amount of time she’d focused on talking about her skills. But she tried anyway.

Closing her eyes, trying to forget that Arran was watching intently, she thought through her desires.

Skills. I want to see my skills.

Nothing. Even a few minutes later, when the silence was getting embarrassing, and she was focused more on the fact that she wasn’t able to do the most basic of tasks with Arran watching and so excited to hear more about her swordfighting skill.

System, please?

Still nothing, not that she thought asking it nicely was really going to work.

“I’m not sure…” she said, shrugging.

Arran hid his disappointment, but she knew that he was annoyed that she wasn’t able to do it.

“Sorry.”

He looked at her strangely, but just shrugged. “You’ll get there. I think this is something we need to get more information on.”

She sunk back into the chair, unwilling to look him in the eye. Her cheeks were on fire. Of course she’d made a fool of herself. Here Arran was, helping her like this and she was just—

She paused her inner monologue.

What am I doing? she thought.

Her thoughts were spiralling, and she was struggling to bring herself back from the brink of embarrassment and shame at being unable to do the simple task; and something darker, hidden under those emotions.

She had never been the type to be affected by embarrassment as much as those around her. She’d always been the one that stood up and confronted things that she didn’t like, even when her friends were unwilling to have everyone look at them.

This wasn’t normal.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself out of the chair and stood.

“Are you okay?” Arran asked, he was looking up at her, and the look of annoyance she thought she’d seen before had passed. He only seemed concerned now.

“Yes,” she lied. “I’m fine. I just want some water.”

Leaving him to the fire, she walked into the kitchen area to cool off a little and drink some of the water they had stored inside. Deciding she wanted something cold, she thrust her feet into her semi-dry boots and stomped out into the courtyard, cup in hand.

The sky was dark and heavy with clouds, each pregnant with unfallen snow. Their dark underbellies threatening to dump blankets of cold within minutes, it seemed like. Taking in a deep breath of the crisp, fresh air, Faye crunched over to a pile of somewhat fresh snow.

Filling her cup, she turned and started back into the house, but someone, a silhouette of someone, was standing right in front of her face.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed, jumping and dropping the cup. She slipped, her unlaced boots not giving her the sturdy footing she expected.

She fell. Faye landed on her back with a whump of air and a cry of pain.

Lying on her back, looking up at the darkened clouds above, Faye took a moment to wonder what she was doing on the ground. She was freezing.

Propping herself up on an elbow, she looked up and around the courtyard.

Nothing.

She slowly pulled herself together and picked up the fallen cup. It was a few steps away.

There was no one else here in the courtyard. Whatever it was that she’d seen had disappeared the moment she’d seen it. What had it been? How had it not made a sound?

Her musings were interrupted by Arran opening the courtyard door. Light spilled out into the night.

“Faye?” he called.

His night vision wouldn’t be any good, but with the light behind him he just looked like a pure shadow to her.

“I’m coming in,” she said.

“It’s cold, what are you doing?”

“Nothing, I… uh, I slipped.”

Taking a last look around the now lit courtyard, she hurried inside and tried to put the unsettling thoughts of a terrible pressure and darkness closing around her out of mind.